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Wednesday, June 3, 2015

New Release: Wavelength Tee

You know what the 2014-2015 school year was going to be as far as my pattern writing was concerned? I had declared it the "Year of Accessories". After publishing a dozen patterns the previous school year, with six of them being garments, I decided I needed to scale back a little bit this year. I think I did pretty well....11 patterns published with one more ready to go next month will still make 12 for this year, but only 3 of them were garments. I really did have fun focusing so much on accessories. But sometime during the winter my local yarn shop got a new order of Hempathy delivered, and when I saw the blue-green color, I couldn't resist designing a summer top for myself!

My favorite tops are usually loose without looking baggy or oversized. The fit I chose for this one keeps the upper chest & shoulder areas at close to zero ease, but the body is loose and flowy with plenty of room for one more cookie. The back is fitted as well, which helps keep the tee from looking oversized.

I also really enjoy the versatility of this style. I could wear it to church or to a "business casual dress"-type of job paired with dress pants of capris. But since I work from home, I'll usually be pairing it with jeans or shorts for a more casual look.

The hems of the body and sleeves use a 3-row stitch pattern that creates a gentle wave. Lay the garment flat after washing for a subtle wave when dry, or use pins to emphasize the waves for a more pronounced undulation.

I used Hempathy for this project, and I can't say enough good things about this yarn. It's easy on the hands, has no itch-factor so it's very wearable for this sensitive-skinned girl, and it gave a flowy, drapey fabric when knitted to pattern gauge. It's listed as a DK-weight yarn, but I can't compare it to any DK-weight yarns that I'm familiar with. (It knits up as a much lighter yarn - look at the photo to the right, under the arm where you can see the light shining through the fabric. Yes, the gauge I use in the pattern is technically in the dk-weight range, but the fabric is VERY thin when knit to that gauge.)

It's also a pretty unique yarn as far as its fiber content. Test knitters on this project found it difficult to approximate the fabric density and drape of the Hempathy with substituted yarns. Often, when I publish patterns, I think it's fine to use substitute yarns and even list them on the pattern page when I am aware of yarns that would be a good match. But for this project I'm going to recommend that knitters use Hempathy rather than substituting. (And I say that with no connection at all to the Elsebeth Lavold, the yarn company that makes Hempathy. They have never given me any sort of payment in the form of money or yarn support for this or any other pattern I've published. I just think you will not be disappointed with this yarn and want to see you get the nicest finished project possible!)

If you must substitute, do it with this in mind: Hempathy is 34% hemp & 25% modal (both fibers are thin and very drapey like linen), and only 34% cotton. In this yarn, the linen-like qualities of the hemp & modal far overpower the cotton qualities. (In my experience, cotton is often "puffy" and sheds quite a bit. Hempathy has neither of those qualities.) Finally, there are 153 yards of Hempathy in each 50g ball. So appropriate substitutes would have fiber content that is about 1/3 hemp/modal/linen and 1/3 cotton. It would also contain close to 153 yds per 50g ball or 306 yds per 100g skein. If the substitute yarn has less yards per ball/skein with a similar fiber content, then the yarn is going to be too thick. If it has more yards per skein with a similar fiber content, it is going to be too thin. For my personal projects, I use the 10% rule. If I'm trying to substitute for a yarn that has 153 yards per 50 g ball, I can use yarn with a very similar fiber content as long as it is + or - 10% of that yardage. So it could contain between 138 and 168 yds per 50g ball, and I am pretty safe assuming that I will be able to achieve gauge (maybe going up or down a little in needle size) AND I will get a resulting fabric that is a reasonably close match to what the designer intended.

I hope that little explanation helps, and I hope you find this an enjoyable summer knit! I'm happy that mine is all finished and I'm actually wearing it as I type this. It's perfect for the beautiful "highs in the 70s" sort of day we had in Central IL today!

Ravelry is a fantastic resource for seeing a pattern on a variety of different body types. Here's the page link for the projects that are posted for this top: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wavelength-tee/people

Looks like it didn't turn into a hyperlink in my comment. If you copy and paste that address into your address bar, it'll pull up the right page. Alternately, you could go to Ravelry.com, search for the Wavelength Tee pattern, then click on the "projects" tab, and that would get you to the same page.